GPs and their practice teams, working in consortia, will be handed substantial responsibility for commissioning, while a new “independent and accountable” NHS Commissioning Board will “lead on the achievement of health outcomes, allocate and account for NHS resources, and lead on quality improvement and promoting patient involvement and choice”, a new White Paper proposes.
Unveiled by Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, “Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS” details how power will be “devolved from Whitehall to patients and professionals” with patients able to choose their GP practice, have easier access to medical records, and have available to them “more transparent information”, to help them decide on treatment venue and care pathway. As part of a “bold new NHS vision”, GP consortia will, the White Paper recommends, in future take on a major commissioning role, while local authorities will be charged with “promoting the joining up of local NHS services, social care and health improvements”. Andrew Lansley said the proposals’ aim was both to “put patients at the heart of the NHS through an information revolution and greater choice and control”, and “to create the world’s largest social enterprise sector”, by increasing the freedoms of NHS Foundation Trusts, and giving NHS staff a greater say in their organisations’ future. The White Paper also proposes strengthening the Care Quality Commission’s role, making Monitor an economic regulator, and a “radical delayering and simplification” of the number of NHS bodies (including phasing out Primary Care Trusts and Strategic Health Authorities), plus a similar “radical reduction” in the Department’s own NHS functions.
